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How To Find Hidden Talent For Your Tech Company

Scott Rothrock is the co-founder, CTO and president of RemarkableHire, a talent sourcing platform that uses social evidence to help recruiters and hiring managers find and evaluate the best job candidates. Connect with him and the RemarkableHire team on Facebook and Twitter.

At companies with tech-focused positions in which advanced skillsets are required to get the job done, top talent is few and far between. To make the talent shortage even more of a challenge, the best of the best aren’t searching for a job, so how do you find them?

There are a number of reasons why tech employers should be proactive when it comes to maintaining their current employees and attracting new ones. Regardless of the state of the economy, qualified candidates for these jobs remain in high demand.

It can be tough to find real talent hidden among a stack of job applications. But if you reconsider your recruitment strategy, it doesn’t have to be. Take a different approach: Rather than waiting for top talent to come to you, go out and search for it yourself. It might seem like a daunting task at first, but all you need are the right tools.

Why “We Are Hiring!” Doesn’t Cut It

As ideal as it would be, your “A” players are not hanging out on job boards all day. The chances of top talent going through your company’s standard application process are slim to none, unfortunately.

Why is this? Plain and simple — your dream hires are already busy. These individuals are likely to be currently employed. Rather than tidying up their LinkedIn profiles and other online resumes, they are using the Internet to thrive off of new ideas and connect with peers in their industries.

The good news: Although already employed, these candidates may be open to changing jobs for a better opportunity. They may be awaiting their next great career move — and you can discover them where they’re already active online.

Social Recruiting Beyond the Big Three

A lot of people define social recruiting in terms of the big three social networks: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. While these are the most popular online platforms incorporated into recruitment strategies today, in order to recruit top talent — especially top technical talent — your sourcing needs to be more informed and nuanced.

Cast a smaller, more focused net. Instead of the big three, go to where these people spend their days demonstrating and participating in their craft, such as Stack Overflow, GitHub and Dribbble. Searching these sites not only helps you find hidden talent, it helps you better qualify them. It also gives you more meaningful ways of engaging with the candidates. "Hey, I liked that PHP question you answered!" is better than "Hey, I found you on LinkedIn.”

This approach will help you rank candidates based on how well they know the skills you are looking for. Talk about eliminating the time spent on unqualified applications, but also the bias inherent in a resume.

Once you have located top talent you want on your team, social recruiting allows you to reach out and communicate with these prospective candidates.

In the skill-specific tech industry (where top talent is hard to come by), you have to be on your “A” game to attract “A” players. And in the HR world, good things come to those who work, not those who wait. Find the right social recruiting strategy and your hiring process will be more proactive, and more effective.

Do you incorporate social recruiting into your current hiring strategy? How do you target passive candidates in your recruitment process?

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